Bush Was No Unilateralist

Paula Dobriansky is too much the diplomat to ever "bristle" at a question. But the word "unilateralism" elicits something close to that response. Sitting in her comfortable office, located in a drab wing of the drab State Department, I ask the undersecretary for democracy and global affairs just what she thinks of the conventional judgment that the Bush administration has practiced a "go it alone" foreign policy.

"If you look at every issue here, every issue I deal with, I can tell you our method has not been to take the U.S. experience and merely transplant it on the soil of another country," she says firmly. "Every issue here has had a rather vibrant, multilateral component to it. And you can see the results."

On the face of it, her remit -- "global affairs" -- encompasses a bewildering set of responsibilities: climate change, human trafficking, pandemic disease, women's issues, democracy, refugees, oceans, migration. The only glue that officially binds these issues together is that none can be solved with bilateral negotiations. They all require global cooperation, or as the undersecretary likes to put it, a "holistic" response.

One reason why these efforts haven't been as noticed is that most aren't the subject of "hard" foreign policy debates. When critics level their unilateralism charge against the Bush administration, they tend to focus on its tougher actions -- the invasion of Iraq, or the refusal to directly engage with rogue leaders.

Ms. Dobriansky's efforts have instead been focused on what scholars like to term "soft power." Coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye (one of Ms. Dobriansky's former professors), soft power describes the goal of engaging other countries on issues of culture and ideology. Considering President Bush's strong commitment to freedom, it should come as no surprise that -- even as he takes a tough line on terrorism or nuclear weapons -- his State Department has been busy trying to foster democratic values across the world.

This is Ms. Dobriansky's bailiwick, and she comes to her passion not just via Mr. Nye, but through her father, the late Lev Dobriansky, a scholar and relentless anti-communist who also served as a U.S. ambassador. "Coming into this job, my father had a great impact on me. He talked about the importance of the human condition and he said that freedom and human dignity are essential components of the human condition. . . . All of my areas, when you look at them, they all relate to the human condition and to those fundamental needs. . . . And all of these issues -- health, human rights, women's issues, democracy, the environment -- are interwoven into our broader national security priorities of peace and stability."

To make the point, she tells a story of Afghan women. "On one of the first visits that we made to Afghanistan, we met two young women in their 20s in Kabul. They were setting up a micro-finance bank, and they said, 'We need resources so women can set up their own businesses.' One of our members from the private sector did give resources specifically to help. . . . The next time we came to Afghanistan, we had to meet at the cafeteria at the embassy, because now there were 80 to 100 women, and they were all owners of businesses, everything from kites to a cement factory, to furniture to rugs.

"The third time we went to meet with them, we had to meet at their headquarters, and those headquarters encompassed an entire federation of Afghan women entrepreneurs. They are incredible. And it was striking to us, what a little targeted assistance could do to support this fundamental change from the time of the Taliban." The point, she explains, is that no country can be stable so long as only half of its population is free to succeed. And foreign stability makes the U.S. safer.

With a staff of 800, Ms. Dobriansky's office oversees a whirlwind of similar programs. Early on, the Bush administration created an office to combat the trafficking of persons. Today, dozens of countries are actively working on prevention, prosecutions, and the protection of victims. In 2002, the U.S. announced the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, in which some 40 governments and groups work to preserve the world's second-largest area of tropical rain forest. In 2005, President Bush announced an international partnership to combat a pandemic avian influenza outbreak. At the time, about 40 nations had preparedness plans; today, as many as 130 countries do.

And then there are the democracy initiatives. With U.S. leadership, in 2005 the United Nations created the Democracy Fund, designed to finance projects that build democratic institutions. More than 35 countries have contributed some $100 million to the fund, which has already green-lighted 85 projects. In 2002, the Bush State Department created the Middle East Partnership Initiative. It is now funding more than 350 initiatives in 15 countries, focusing on everything from press rights in Algeria to legal rights for Yemeni women. One project brings young women here from every country in the Middle East to work in Fortune 500 companies.

She is quick to note that much of this has been driven by President Bush himself. She singles out Africa, where Mr. Bush has more than quadrupled health funding. "I used to have that portfolio," she says. "But the president has devoted such personal time to issues such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria that the State Department created a whole new department, the U.S. Global Aids Coordinator."

It might also be the case that the Bush administration doesn't get credit for leadership on key issues for the reason that the results aren't always to the liking of the liberal intelligentsia. When Mr. Bush first took office in 2001, he met howls for his decision not to submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification. That event helped create the storyline of Bush unilateralism.

Less noticed is that in the intervening years, the global community, pushed by Ms. Dobriansky, has taken a dramatically different view of how to approach global warming. "Today, there isn't just a focus on the short term, but on the medium and long term. There is a belief that there needs to be a revolution in technologies. There is an understanding that the world is much different than in 1990, that you now have these major emerging economies, and that they can contribute significantly to the challenges of climate change." None of this sits well with environmentalists, who still believe the only course of action is carbon restrictions that punish developed countries. But especially with the recent economic crisis, governments are taking a more rational view.

Nor is the Bush administration's "multilateralism" restricted to governments. Civil society is obviously comprised of all sorts of groups and, like prior administrations, the Bush team has made these outside forces integral to their efforts.

One of Ms. Dobriansky's favorite examples is the administration's ongoing effort to completely eradicate polio. Spearheading that effort are, in fact, two nongovernmental organizations -- the U.N. Foundation (Ted Turner's group) and Rotary. "We all sat together to come up with a strategy. And while we reached out to the diplomatic corps in key countries, those groups were on the ground, putting out the resources, doing the work. It is great cooperation," she explains.

The administration has also tried to integrate the business community. In 2006 the State Department established the Global Internet Freedom Task Force, a coalition of human-rights organizations and business players to come up with ways technology can combat censorship and repressive regimes. As a result of that group, the State Department's annual human-rights report now includes an evaluation of a country's Internet freedoms.

And then there is Hollywood. Yes, Ms. Dobriansky moves with the stars. "America's best advocates for positive change are its best-known faces," she confirms. She's stood beside Angelina Jolie to talk about refugees. (She admits to some worry that nobody would ask her any questions.) She's worked with Bo Derek on animal trafficking. She recounts singer Ricky Martin's request to help deter trafficking of individuals. "He does wonderful work in and throughout Latin America, and has been able to reach communities that I don't know we would have otherwise been effective in reaching -- younger people in particular," she says.

"She is a dynamo. She was creative collaborator on so many issues," says actor Richard Gere, who has worked with Ms. Dobriansky on Tibet and HIV/AIDS. Mr. Gere admits he's no fan of many Bush actions, but on those two areas he offers praise. He talks about Ms. Dobriansky's efforts to obtain the Congressional Medal of Honor for the Dalai Lama, an award that both honored His Holiness, but also sent a signal to China of America's support for Tibet. "This is a deeply interconnected world. And there is no good for us unless there is an overall good. That's her approach," he says.

As Ms. Dobriansky prepares to leave State, she holds one unusual distinction. Appointed to her job in the first days of the Bush administration (she had been president of the Council on Foreign Relations), she is now the longest serving person in her post. The next closest would have been FDR's undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles, who had similar responsibilities.

That long service means Ms. Dobriansky has worked under both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and I ask her to describe the difference. "Well, Secretary Powell came with a military background, and Secretary Rice comes with an academic background. I think that has maybe had a little bit of influence. With him, he was very efficient on how to organize. In her case, she really enjoys bringing different experts together to brainstorm on this or that issue."

The time has also given Ms. Dobriansky a chance to contemplate some of those big foreign-policy divides, for instance the famous split between "realists" and "idealists." Her own view is that the split is greatly exaggerated. "This office brings together idealism and realism. It is the nexus. You pursue goals that are idealistic, but in the end all of these issues are absolutely integral to our greater national security strategy. These issues can be used to advance relationships with other countries, and in the process affect the lives of real people."

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